The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to techniques for monitoring and controlling power usage of electrical devices in a home area network and, more particularly to techniques controlling antenna diversity in a home area network.
With respect to power and energy distribution, a group of one or more electrical devices in given a geographical location, such as a residential house, a group of residential houses, a commercial building, or a group of commercial buildings, that draw power from an energy provider, such as an electrical power company, may be referred to as a home area network. To monitor and/or control energy usage, an energy service interface (ESI) may be provided, which essentially acts as an interface between the home area network and the energy provider. For instance, the ESI may be network-centric and may be configured to communicate with home area network devices using wireless communication technologies. However, because different polarization configurations (e.g., horizontally polarized, vertically polarized, etc.) are available for antenna design, not all of the home area network devices may have the same polarization and, moreover, an antenna of the ESI may have a different polarization from one or more antennas of the home area network. When this is the case, communications between home area network devices having an antenna polarization that does not match the polarization of an antenna of the ESI may experience signal losses, which may prevent the ESI from receiving and/or communicating accurate power usage information. The signal also may reflect off of different surfaces, and combine to cancel the signal at different locations. Thus, a need exists to control spatial diversity.